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I need an economist to explain this to me

Ailer · 2014-01-15T18:47:28+00:00

I've been having discussions about these statistics the last few days, and have only a rudimentary understanding of economics. I'm hoping...

Ailer

January 15, 2014

0 upvotes

/r/MensRights

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Title	I need an economist to explain this to me
Author	Ailer
Upvotes	0
Comments	12
Date	January 15, 2014 6:47 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1vakns/i_need_an_economist_to_explain_this_to_me/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/i-need-an-economist-to-explain-this-to-me.1004836 https://theredarchive.com/post/1004836

Comments

[–]MisterDamage 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[–]Ailer[S] 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

Thank you very much for the response, but I don't understand this part

The effect of increasing female participation in the workforce was to mute the effect that this had on students continuing into higher education. Without the increased female participation, greater participation in higher education would have allowed the labor market to respond more effectively to the changes in the employment environment.

Does this mean that women entering the workforce somehow stopped the need for a higher educated workforce? Or that it slowed market signals that there was going to be such a demand? Or is it claiming that the workforce prior to women entering it was not capable of performing the tasks in demand due to lack of education?

I suppose I don't really under stand this part entirely either:

As the pool of low paid jobs contracted

Since everything I've read has more or less indicated the pool of low paid jobs has exploded. I get automation killing manufacturing though, and how that could cause a divide in income growth, or, more dramatically, the elimination of a middle class.

[–]MisterDamage 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (8 children) | Copy Link

The effect of increasing female participation...

I'm not surprised you had trouble with that since I had my brain set to stupid when I wrote it. What I meant to say is that while students continued into higher education in far greater numbers (since the demand side of the labor market required a higher educated workforce, not less), this effect was muted by increased labor market participation by women.

Since everything I've read has more or less indicated the pool of low paid jobs has exploded.

That's more a response in what used to be middle income jobs to the increasing availability of educated workers, wages in the skilled and semi skilled sectors have gone from the middle income brackets down to the lower income brackets*.

While you're correct that the number of low income jobs has exploded, the number of unskilled jobs has not seen a similar increase.

*An exception being any skilled work in the construction sector, if you're willing to work in a death profession, come home covered in dirt every day, work exposed to the elements and often be unable to make money during wet weather, there are big buck to be made.

[–]Ailer[S] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

OK, so the first bit is really that women entering the workforce gave us a little 'jiggle' room with regard to employment that enabled more people to enter higher education? And since more people were now skilled labour, the value of low skilled labour dropped?

See, my problem with this is I'm basically looking at it with nothing but an understanding of supply and demand, which says increasing the number of workers without increasing the demand for those workers is going to end up with lower wages, regardless of whether it is high skill or low skill work. So if we increase the size of the workforce, we'd expect to see the number of low income jobs explode, and we would expect even high-skill jobs to see income decrease thanks to the growth in size of the labour market. We've both lamented the loss of manufacturing jobs, but the reason they were such a loss in my mind is that there were low-skill high-income jobs. Something that seem to only exist when there are not enough workers for the demand.

And here's the thing with regard to the growth in inequality: those top bracket families? Do you think both partners work? If Partner X is a doctor, and Partner Y has any job at all, is Partner Y not taking a job from a someone else whose partner may not be employed, taking the sole income from a family so their own family can be more comfortable? I read an article that claimed this was why Muslim women didn't generally work: because it was taking food from another family.

[–]MisterDamage 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

[–]Ailer[S] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

I guess I don't understand how, when we're looking at the past, the total number of jobs ISN'T fixed. The number of people who had jobs in 1980 isn't suddenly going to change. The number of people who had jobs in 2015, that I can see as being not fixed... but the number of jobs in the past? Not so much.

I'm also a little spotty on the whole 'wealth creation' thing, since the creation of a good or product doesn't increase the money supply (or demand... most of the time). Selling something doesn't increase the money supply. At best they move money about. Ideally to where it's needed most. And we've seen a lot of evidence that, instead of the money moving to where it's needed, it's just pooling.

That was a moderately interesting read, but I suspect it actually supports my point: More regulations actually means the existence of more jobs (in government, but still) which by your logic should mean more wealth, and then more economic activity, and so on. Why can I find no evidence of this happening?

[–]MisterDamage 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]Ailer[S] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

Wealth isn't money. Money represents wealth

So talking about money means we're talking about wealth. If I ask you to show me wealth in real life, you're either left pointing to everything, or explaining it's an imaginary concept. If it's the former, then there's a finite amount of wealth out there. If it's the latter, wealth is a grand delusion we all play, and the problems are as simple to fix as saying they're fixed. For the moment, I'm going to assume the former, since no one has said the magic words yet.

If wealth is finite, then the monetary representation of it is really just how finely the pie is sliced... currency markets and such more or less determine how much of the earth-pie (for now) is for any given nation. The only real way for any nation to gain more wealth is to take it from another nation*. 'Working' isn't going to generate wealth. At best it lets someone not having to do something themselves, whether it be feeding themselves (agriculture), making themselves clothes (textiles), or entertaining themselves. If I do all these things for myself, it doesn't count economically. Why does it count when someone else does it? I'm under the impression the answer is: because currency exchanged hands.

Of course, if you just replace 'money supply' and 'money' with wealth in my previous comment, does the claim suddenly stand?

*I say this, but there is something human beings can make from nothing: other humans.

[–]MisterDamage 1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]autowikibot 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Here's a bit from linked Wikipedia article about Wealth :

The modern understanding of Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. This excludes the core meaning as held in the originating old English word weal, which is from an Indo-European word stem. In this larger understanding of wealth, an individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy.

The modern concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, and clearly so for growth economics and development economics yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent. At the most general level, economists may define wealth as "anything of value" that captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept. Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various individuals and in different contexts. Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since o ... (Truncated at 1000 characters)

^Picture ^- ^A ^stack ^of ^gold ^bars: ^a ^modern ^{understanding} ^of ^wealth.

^{image source} ^| ^about ^| ^{/u/MisterDamage can reply with 'delete'. Will also delete if comment's score is -1 or less.} ^| ^{To summon: wikibot, what is something?} ^| ^{flag for glitch}

[–]Ailer[S] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]rightsbot 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link